Lil Wayne vs. Drake: A Battle of Album Arts

If you've stepped foot outside in New York City this summer, chances are your field of vision has been bombarded by promotion for the "Drake vs. Lil Wayne "August 19th show at Forest Hills Stadium. While both artists get along famously, rap fans have contested who of the two is better for a number of years now, and the playful "VS" in the title of the show adds a further element of rivalry to the debate. The sheer amount of street team work, parodying the logo for fighting video game Street Fighter IV, shouldn't be that surprising as Wayne and Drake have been two of the genre's most visually obsessed artists. From Wayne's head-to-toe tattoos to Drake's masterful on-camera performances (seriously, try watching one of his videos on mute), the two know you're looking at them and are maximizing those minutes. It just so happens the only aspect of the Wayne/Drake comparisons that hasn't been evaluated seems to be a visual topic: their album and mixtape cover arts. We've selected five of their covers from different point in their career to determine who had the better visuals?

Hot Boyz Get It How U Live!! vs. Drake Comeback Season
While Drake had one mixtape prior to Comeback Season, his 2007 cover here has become the iconic image of the first incarnation of Drake. Seemingly the halfway point between "Jimmy from Degrassi" and the Drake we know today, the senior picture-looking shot stands in big contrast to the earliest Lil Wayne cover photo a decade prior. One of the few rappers to make his recorded debut while his age was still in single digits, Wayne's always Lil even when he truly was little, such as the 15-year-old Pen-N-Pixelated Wayne we see here.

WINNER: Drake

Lil Wayne Tha Block Iz Hot vs. Drake So Far Gone
Again, our examples here are from a decade apart when Wayne and Drake were given a significant platform for their first major solo releases. While Drake's So Far Gone mixtape has an eye-catching artistic slant, nothing beats the sheer late-90s rap cover absurd spectacle of Wayne's Tha Block Iz Hot. One look and we're taken right back to rows-upon-rows of them on new release Tuesday at Sam Goody.